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Saturday, May 14, 2016

"We risk becoming a society of technological prowess and philosophical illiteracy" according to John Kaag, professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and David O’Hara, associate professor of philosophy and classics at Augustana University, in South Dakota, and teaches field ecology courses in Central America and Alaska.

Photo: Tina Zellmer for The Chronicle Review

We are on the verge of becoming the best
trained, and least educated, society since the Romans — and reducing
the humanities to a type of soft science will only hasten this trend.As the sciences rightly grow, a free society must ensure that
criticism of the sciences grows apace. Effective criticism depends on
distance, in this case on an unshakeable difference, between the
humanities and the STEM fields. That is not to say that STEM researchers
can’t or shouldn’t be experts in the humanities, but rather that the
work that the humanities do should not be judged by the metrics of hard
science. As Aristotle, Plato’s most famous student, suggests at the
beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, "precision is not to be
sought for alike in all discussions." Similarly, we should not expect
the humanities to be driven or dominated by the objectives of science.
Plato teaches us that part of the liberal arts’ enduring mission is
precisely to critique these objectives.It ought to be obvious that the study of law, justice, and the arts
is one of the best preparations for governing. This goes for governing
our polis and equally for governing our technologies and ourselves. If
you’re interested in learning about justice, you don’t go to the
chemistry laboratory. You go to philosophy class and travel to Plato’s Republic.But if you go to the Republic in search of concrete answers
about justice (as many of our students are encouraged to search for the
"right" answers in their labs), you will be disappointed. Plato is not
famous for answering questions but for staking his life on the chance to
ask them. He seems more interested in inviting his readers to ask their
own questions and to finish the dialogue themselves, as if to say that
it’s more important to learn to think than to memorize others’ dogmatic
principles. The question about justice that motivates the Republic is
posed in a lengthy series of dialogues, and it does not give rise to a
fixed doctrine. Plato seems to be suggesting that part of being just is
taking the time to think seriously about justice.That involves asking questions — and not answering them before they
have been posed in a meaningful and detailed way. It involves patience
and reflection, increasingly rare in our STEM culture. When we dismiss
perennial questions of right action as ivory-tower claptrap and try to
get down to the business of satisfying our passions or current economic
or military needs, we can find ourselves chasing the wrong ends because
we quickly forget what the right ends could be. To put it differently:
If we treat the contemplation of the best life as a luxury we cannot
afford, seemingly urgent matters will crowd out the truly important
ones.

Plato knew this firsthand. He had watched as ambition, tied to
technological superiority, had led his fellow Athenians to engage in a
number of poorly conceived military campaigns, the last of which had
allowed the Spartans to lay siege to Athens. In the face of such a
ruthless foe, Athens did what any wealthy democracy would do: It built a
wall around itself. Some of the walls of the Peloponnesian War are
still visible, hastily built out of whatever the Athenians could lay
hands on — the remnants of roofs and doorposts — suggesting that some
buildings were torn down to make them. That is instructive, if not
cautionary. It is often the case that in our attempts to guard ourselves
we destroy the very things that we long to protect. Identifying and
negotiating these paradoxes is the stuff of a liberal-arts education.Read more...

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Hello, my name is Helge Scherlund and I am the Education Editor and Online Educator of this personal weblog and the founder of eLearning • Computer-Mediated Communication Center.
I have an education in the teaching adults and adult learning from Roskilde University, with Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Human Resource Development (HRD) as specially studied subjects. I am the author of several articles and publications about the use of decision support tools, e-learning and computer-mediated communication. I am a member of The Danish Mathematical Society (DMF), The Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics (DSTS) and an individual member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Note: Comments published here are purely my own and do not reflect those of my current or future employers or other organizations.